Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear talks to reporters after attending a caucus meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. While touting his state's health care overhaul success, Beshear told reporters that voters and politicians need to be patient with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act and the Healthcare.gov website. / Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

by Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY

by Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY

After weeks of trying to allay the concerns of vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2014 over the fumbled rollout of Obamacare, President Obama and Democratic leaders have shifted to a simple message to the rank-and-file: Buck up.

With the federal online exchange now running relatively smoothly, Obama and his team are urging incumbent Democrats - some of whom were seething over tightening polls in the wake of the glitch-plagued launch of HealthCare.gov and millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices from their insurers - to take ownership of the health care law.

In a reference to his approval ratings that have nose-dived since the opening of the federal marketplace on Oct. 1, Obama said last week that he's not concerned with the polls.

"More people without insurance have gained insurance - more than 3 million young Americans who have been able to stay on their parents' plan, the more than half a million Americans and counting who are poised to get covered starting on Jan. 1, some for the very first time," Obama said. "And it is these numbers - not the ones in any poll - that will ultimately determine the fate of this law."

But in the background, with midterm elections 11 months away, the push to reunify Democrats behind the law is well underway.

One of Obama's top advocates for the health care law, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, traveled to Capitol Hill last week to tout the success the law is having in his state and he assured House Democrats that glitches with HealthCare.gov will be a distant memory by the time voters go to the polls next year.

The White House also announced earlier this week that the president has recruited his former senior adviser who was critical in getting the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010, Phil Schiliro, to return to the administration to help him get the law back on track and assist the White House's outreach to Congress.

And the Senate Majority PAC - a Democratic super PAC - last week launched an unusually early advertising campaign for an incumbent in which they tout North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan as a champion of the president's health care law, while attacking a potential 2014 GOP opponent, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, on his record on health care issues.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Durham, N.C., Bill Bell, and North Carolina state Sen. Floyd McKissick used a White House-organized call with reporters earlier this week to criticize Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and the GOP-controlled state legislature for blocking Medicaid expansion, a provision of Obamacare. A Supreme Court ruling last year effectively left it up to the states whether to expand the health care program for low-income Americans.

The federal government will pick up nearly all of the costs of the expansion (100% for the first three years and up to 90% until 2020), but some governors have opposed expanding Medicaid because they fear in the long term states will break under the extra cost of maintaining the expansion.

"What I'm hearing from people on the streets is that people are concerned, people are hurting," Bell said. "They see a governor, a legislature that's not coming to their rescue when they can (and) at no cost to them. I think people are going to seek repercussions when it gets down to voting next year."

McCrory dismissed the criticism as a "sad attempt" by the White House "to transfer blame through surrogates for the failure of the Obamacare rollout."

To be certain, Republicans - and outside groups supporting them - continue their efforts to remind voters of Democrats' support of the president's health care law.

The GOP push is most evident in three key Senate races in the South - Hagan of North Carolina, Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana - which Republicans consider among the most vulnerable of Democratic-held seats and crucial to the GOP quest to win control of the Senate. (Landrieu launched her first campaign advertisement for the election cycle on Wednesday, highlighting legislation she introduced that calls for insurance companies to continue offering the plans that were being canceled because they didn't meet Obamacare's minimum benefit requirements.)

Nationally, more than $9.7 million has been spent on television advertising critical of the health care law in 2013 - with nearly $3 million of that advertising in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, according to Kantar Media Campaign Media Analysis Group.

The three Democratic senators in those states voted in favor of the president's health care law, and Republicans have already made their support of Obamacare the focal point of the 2014 campaigns.

The National Republican Congressional Committee on Tuesday started a $52,000 radio buy in which they take aim at Reps. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.; Scott Peters, D-Calif.; and Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H.; tying the three lawmakers to Obama's "broken promise" that Americans could keep their old health care plans under the new law.

Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity, a political group with deep ties to billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch, has already spent millions in those states as well as Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida and Alaska since September on anti-Obamacare advertising.

"Women are the driving force of the economy," says the narrator in AFP's latest advertisement targeting Hagan. "They balance the family checkbook. They start businesses. They create jobs. But Kay Hagan just doesn't get it. Instead of listening to North Carolina, Hagan continues to push for Obamacare."

The Southern Democrat trio has certainly been under an intense barrage for their support of Obamacare.

But Democrats, at least for now, can take some solace in that Republicans have had trouble in the early-going finding strong candidates to make a challenge for several Democratic-held Senate seats - including Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire, according to political analysts.

In Colorado, for example, a Quinnipiac University poll published last month shows that the approval rating of Sen. Mark Udall, one of the state's two Democratic U.S. senators, plunged to 44% after the disaster rollout of the health care law. Voters by 47%-41% said Udall did not deserve to be re-elected.

Yet, head-to-head against six potential GOP contenders, Udall holds the lead, according to the poll.

"The Republicans, I just don't think, have people that are going to pose a serious threat to him," said John Straayer, a Colorado State University political scientist.

While the polls currently look tight for some incumbent Democrats, time may be on their side if Obama keeps his health care law from unraveling, says John Davis, a North Carolina-based analyst and editor of the John Davis Political Report.

"Right now all Democratic incumbents look vulnerable," Davis said. "But if the technical problems with the Affordable Care Act become old news...and if the economy continues to develop positively, there may not be a compelling reason in (11) months to make a change."